Good, bad, or indifferent, every customer has an experience with your company. But most organizations struggle with how to manage that experience to create maximum value for customers… and the organization.

Carbone isn’t just a thought leader, but a thought provoker. Hailed as being a one-of-a kind intellectual practitioner, his ability to blend the worlds of academia and 21st century business strategy keeps him on the cutting edge of customer experience management.

As the pioneer widely credited with launching the customer experience management and employee experience movement, he will teach your organization how to leverage the science of total experience management to deliver world class customer and employee experiences that create engaged and loyal customers and employees.

His charismatic personality and down to earth and amusing take on total experience management has captivated and inspired audiences for years—forever changing the way audience members think about the industry, profession, association or business they are in.

People who hear Lou speak say he transforms the way they look at the customer experience. Whether it’s a keynote presentation, workshop, panel discussion, company-sponsored educational session, attendees learn:

The science behind customer experience management.

How customer experiences can be leveraged as a value proposition.

Why emotion is at the root of the customer experience and how sensory clues impact customers’ perceptions and actions.

Why understanding how people think on an unconscious level is today’s most critical competitive edge.

How to design and deliver the drivers that create a memorable and meaningful experience.

Lou Carbone’sKeynote Presentations

Getting “Clued In” to the Practice of Total Experience Management: Intentionally Managing Experience Clues to Bring Customers Back Again and Again

Your organization cannot NOT deliver an experience. The question is: How powerful is it? Carbone opens your eyes to why organizations must start managing customer experiences with as much commitment and rigor as they historically have put toward the management of product and services. In today’s socially-connected 21st century business world, customer engagement, loyalty and advocacy is no longer driven by the products you sell; it’s driven by how well the experience you deliver meets your customers’ ever-changing emotional needs and wants. Through illustrations from Fortune 100 clients in a broad range of industries including healthcare, financial services, hospitality, and retail, Carbone demonstrates why intentionally designing and delivering customer experiences from the “customer back” is today’s most critical competitive edge.

Unleashing the Power of the Science of Total Experience Management: Essential Insights for Business Leaders

New insights into how consumers arrive at decisions are rewriting old rules for business. Science is proving that as much as 95% of human thought, emotion and action are rooted in the unconscious mind.

This illuminating session explores proven methods for understanding the unconscious drivers that influence customer behavior. Carbone offers actionable ways to translate these insights to more valuable—and competitive—customer experiences. Many organizations are dealing with approaches rooted in decades old process improvement and are getting disappointing results. Carbone moves thinking from the Industrial Age to the world in the 21st Century.

The Brand Canyon—The Relationship Between Total Experience Management and Brand Management

Companies focus relentlessly on brand, yet products and services continue to become increasingly undifferentiated. In fact, brands are being sent to their graves at a faster pace than ever. Carbone is leading the way in focusing on the critical relationship between brand management and total experience management. Through client case studies he illustrates why managing customer experience value along side brand efforts is driving today’s differentiating value proposition—and transforming businesses.

Lou Carbone is available for customer experience keynotes, workshops, panels and consultations.

Professional Profile

Lou Carbone is the Founder, President and Chief Experience Officer of Experience Engineering, Inc., a total customer and employee experience management firm. He is also the author of Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again (Prentice-Hall, 2004). Carbone has spent more than two decades leading the world in the development of experience value management theory and practice in a broad range of industries including travel, healthcare, retail, technology, financial services, manufacturing, and education.

Carbone is widely recognized in academic and business circles as the thought leader who launched the customer experience and employee experience movement with the publication of his seminal article titled "Engineering Experiences," first published in Marketing Management magazine in 1994. He is an expert in the field of experience value creation, and is the originator of the first and only method for experience value management. He has lectured and his theories have been taught at leading institutions including the Harvard Business School, Columbia, The Cornell School of Hospitality, Haas School at the University of California at Berkeley, Texas A&M’s Center for Retail Studies, Carlson School of Business at the University of Minnesota, Boston University, UNLV and Parsons School of Design among others.

Carbone has written numerous published articles, is a business speaker (member of the National Speaker’s Association), and has been an adjunct faculty member at the IBM Advanced Business Institute. He is past chairman of the American Management Association Sales and Marketing Council, Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors of Health Quality Partners, Inc., former Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Brown College, member of the Thiel College Board of Trustees, and has served on the editorial board of Healthcare Design Magazine. His best selling book, Clued In: How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again, received the celebrated Fast Company Reader’s Choice Award.

Carbone has worked with companies like Pizza Hut, KFC, Avis, H&R Block, General Motors, IBM, Taco Bell, Progressive Auto Insurance, John Deere, Blockbuster, IBM, La Quinta, Time Warner Cable, Deluxe Financial Services, Office Depot, Audi of America, Royal Bank of Canada, and Boston Children’s Hospital to name just a few.

Prior to founding Experience Engineering, Carbone was an advertising executive with major agencies in New York, Detroit and Minneapolis. While with Campbell-Ewald Advertising, Grey Advertising, and Manoff Geers Gross, he worked with companies including American Tourister Luggage, National Car Rental, Walt Disney World, Eastern Airlines and Howard Johnson.

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What Business LeadersHave to Say about Lou

“I first met Lou Carbone 20 years ago and have seen his Experience Engineering concepts grow and develop. His ideas are so good that in every discussion and presentation I have heard on the topic, people walk away in amazement as to the simplicity yet power of his approach.”

Al Dyon, former President, Allstate Motor Club

“Lou Carbone is to customer experiences what Edward Deming was to the quality movement—a pioneer in developing and codifying a managerial discipline around an important but abstract value. Lou goes beyond theory to offer managers a proven set of principles, tools and prescriptions for delivering more value creating experiences.”

“Lou Carbone and his company awakened us to the experiential voice of the customer that we’d never considered before. Their work with us was pivotal to our #1 brand recognition today, and has been the catalyst for change and knowledge transfer at Avis.”

Ronald Masini, former EVP Product Development Avis Rent-A-Car

“Lou Carbone’s humor and vast knowledge of experience management principles were an extremely compelling combination for our audience. I look forward to booking him again.”

Ian Parsons, Producer of North American and European Conferences on Customer Management

“Carbone's presentations are truly unique and apply to any industry. His ability to blend theory with practical application in the ‘hot topic’ area of experience, makes him among the freshest and most dynamic speakers around.”

“This is truly revenue producing strategy. Carbone’s experience management disciplines move brand positioning to a new level because brand is so much more than just the metal that sits on the showroom floor. When the customer experience is carefully designed and consistently delivered, that customer will repeat and refer. And that’s revenue.”

Larry Hice, National Sales and Service Manager, Buick Motor Division of General Motors

“In today’s business environment, one can pick being product focused, marketing focused or consumer focused. If you choose to be consumer focused, this is the book to read. Clued In is Experience Management 2.0.”

Watts Wacker, FirstMatter LLC, Author of Visionary’s Handbook: Nine Paradoxes that will Shape the Future of Your Business